Motorola Delivers TETRA Solution with Innovative Fuel Cell Backup Power to Denmark’s SINE Network

Robust, environmentally-friendly TETRA solution backed up by fuel cell technology
June 30, 2009

GLOSTRUP, Denmark – 30 June, 2009 - Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced that a total of forty Motorola TETRA Base Stations with fuel cell back-up are now live across Denmark’s SINE public safety network, with approximately 50 planned and commissioned for installation throughout the remainder of the year.




The environmentally friendly, fuel cell-based back-up solution, which was developed with Dantherm Power, was installed to provide mission-critical operations with continuous secure communication across the nationwide SINE network in Denmark. It is the first network of its kind in the world.

“The use of our hydrogen fuel cell technology in mission-critical environments provides public safety networks across the country with uninterrupted network access.” says Per Albæk, CEO for Dantherm Power. “Our partnership with Motorola is a world’s first and we hope to continue developing innovative technology that helps professionals do their jobs more effectively.”


Government guidelines dictate that batteries or conventional generator solutions have to be provided as a backup for main power at critical locations or if the main power has regular outages. However, conventional diesel or petrol-based generators have a number of disadvantages, including carbon emissions and noise. Fuel cell technology offers a no carbon, low acoustic alternative to match the needs for TETRA base stations in challenging locations. They are proven in critical power back-up situations and can run for extended periods limited only by the supply of the hydrogen, and the only emission is water.


“Loss of power should never be an issue to professionals working in mission-critical or emergency environments, and Motorola has continued to invest in environmentally-friendly backup power systems for TETRA” said Jens Kristiansen, vice president and general manager, TETRA Global Products and Solutions, Motorola. “We are delighted that the SINE rollout has been such a success and we look forward to rolling out further hydrogen powered fuel cells in critical locations across Northern Europe.”

Where the fuel cell power system is being used at a TETRA base station in an emergency, and no main power is available, excess back-up power can be used to recharge TETRA radios, eliminating the need for the user to return to the base to recharge. Motorola has worked to ensure that as its TETRA technology is extended to more and more industries and locations, its solutions have remained cost-effective and environmentally friendly.

To learn more about Motorola’s environmental initiatives, visit our newly released 2008 Corporate Responsibility report at www.motorola.com/responsibility.

Corsair® Launches New 128GB and 64GB Performance Series Solid State Drives

Fremont, CA. June 25, 2009. Corsair®, a worldwide leader in high-performance computer memory, power supplies and flash memory products, including solid-state drives, today announced two new products in its Performance Series SSD family: the P128 and P64 high-performance solid-state drives.

Building on the success of the award-winning P256 SSD, the Corsair P128 delivers the same 220MB/sec read speeds and 200MB/sec write speeds as its higher capacity cousin, at a lower cost. The P64 is one of the best-performing, lower-density SSDs available, with read speeds of up to 220MB/sec and write speeds of up to 120MB/sec. Both drives utilize the same cutting-edge technology as the P256, including a sophisticated Samsung controller IC with 128MB of cache memory and NCQ support to deliver class-leading, stutter-free performance.



“The high performance of the new Performance Series solid-state drives, combined with the inherent reliability and stability of flash technology, make them ideal for both new system builds and upgrades of desktops and notebooks,” said Jim Carlton, VP of Marking for Corsair. “These drives have also been extensively validated in a wide range of popular notebook computers, which means that you can upgrade with absolute confidence.”

The Corsair P128 solid-state drive is available immediately from Corsair’s authorized distributors and resellers worldwide, and is backed by a Two-Year Limited Warranty. The Corsair P64 solid-state drive will be available in early July. Complete customer support via telephone, email, forum and Tech Support Express is also available.

For more information on Corsair solid-state drives, please visit http://www.corsair.com/

StudioGPU Ships MachStudio Pro "Supercharges 3D Workflow with Real-Time Finishing and Compositing

DMN Newswire--2009-6-30--
StudioGPU announced today the immediate availability of MachStudio Pro(tm), a professional 3D workflow and rendering package created by artists for artists. MachStudio Pro offers a seamless way to create and interact with cinematic quality 3D objects and environments in a non-linear workspace by leveraging the horsepower of off-the-shelf professional graphics processing units (GPUs) to deliver real-time and near real-time workflow performance on a desktop workstation.



MachStudio Pro streamlines real-time 3D workflow, allowing artists to easily manage and interact with complex lighting, caustics, cameras, shaders, materials, ambient occlusion, and color grading. With MachStudio Pro, render times can be dramatically reduced from hours to minutes and minutes to seconds or sub-seconds. Comparable final scenes are consistently rendered with MachStudio Pro at rates of 500 to 900 times faster than traditional rendering packages. A complex 1.98 million polygon high-definition image, for example, renders in 14 seconds using MachStudio Pro while the same scene rendered with a traditional rendering package can take more than three hours to complete.

"Attempts at real-time workflow on workstations for the past 30 years have been futile--until now," said Dr. Jon Peddie, founder and CEO, Jon Peddie Research. "Designed by real studio pros at StudioGPU, the MachStudio Pro product provides a design environment that professional artists and technical directors should recognize immediately. This software is fast, and it can run even faster using GPUs for real-time or near real-time 3D workflow," Peddie emphasized. "MachStudio Pro could very well change the way things are done for real-time productivity and rendering on the desktop."

"MachStudio Pro is a core part of our previsualization pipeline," said Jericca Cleland, director and CEO of Twenty One Inc., a cross-media film development and preproduction studio in Vancouver, British Columbia. "It removes the stranglehold traditional CG lighting and rendering has placed on production and provides a way for directors, supervisors, and artists to creatively explore and render lighting on the fly, enabling significant increases in efficiency throughout the process," Cleland explained. "With the fluidity of lighting in MachStudio Pro, we remain visually focused instead of technically focused during lighting, which greatly enhances our ability to host interactive sessions and deliver quality results to our clients without losing control of the budget."

Powered by a real-time rendering engine, MachStudio Pro software fits into the creative pipeline after all 3D models are produced and provides lighting, cameras, materials, compositing and finishing capabilities. The MachStudio Pro workflow is akin to a virtual 3D real-time studio environment, allowing artists, designers, directors, and TDs to work with lighting, camera views and multi-point perspectives for a real-time view of frames as they will appear in the final rendered format.

MachStudio Pro Features and Benefits

Developed and continuously proven in a true high-end production environment, MachStudio Pro empowers creativity with real-time 3D workflow and rendering features that eliminate the need for expensive render farms. Key features include:

• Optimized shader and material pipeline
• Ability to adjust and view all render passes independently
• Full materials library
• Interactive ambient occlusion (AO)
• Fully configurable lighting and animation constraint system
• Animatable and keyframeable properties for all objects, lights, cameras and materials
• Real-time High Dynamic Range (HDR) cameras and lighting
• Exporters to support a wide range of file formats, including Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya and .fbx formats
• Completely customizable interface with assignable hot keys, drag-and-drop tabs and fully functional scene manager
• Support for the creation of unlimited lights and gels
• Simulated global illumination, reflections, refractions and subsurface scattering
• Resolution independent with support for all popular final file formats and codecs
• Full Python scripting support

For a complete MachStudio Pro list of features, product overview videos and related software and hardware requirements, please visit www.studiogpu.com.

A total out-of-box high-performance solution, MachStudio Pro ships with an AMD ATI FireGL(tm) V8650 3D workstation graphics accelerator card featuring 2 GB onboard graphics memory and a parallel processing Unified Shader architecture. Supporting a wide range of industries--from computer-aided design (CAD) visualization and 3D animation to top-quality film and broadcast projects-- MachStudio Pro offers seamless interoperability with leading professional 3D modeling, animation, and 3D CAD software packages. Artists, designers, and producers facing tight deadlines, hardware limitations, or rendering bottlenecks will ultimately benefit from the real-time workflow and GPU rendering performance advantages of MachStudio Pro.

"The ongoing commitment at AMD to offer its professional customers the fastest and most innovative GPU accelerated workstation graphics performance led to our technology relationship with StudioGPU," said Janet Matsuda, senior director, Professional Graphics, AMD. "The cutting-edge speed and performance that MachStudio Pro software offers, paired with the graphics performance of the ATI FireGL V8650 3D professional graphics accelerator card, removes performance barriers and gives production artists and technical directors a competitive edge vital to today's?finish it yesterday delivery expectations."

Pricing and Purchasing Information

MachStudio Pro is now shipping for Microsoft Windows XP Professional and Windows Vista operating systems, and comes standard with an AMD ATI FireGL(tm) V8650 3D workstation graphics accelerator card. The special introductory price of MachStudio Pro is $4,999 (USD MSRP), which includes a full year of technical support and product maintenance updates. Education and volume licensing is also available upon request. For more information about how MachStudio Pro can streamline a 3D-production pipeline or to locate a reseller, please visit the StudioGPU web site at www.studiogpu.com.

About StudioGPU
StudioGPU develops software and technology that frees digital artists from the creative shackles of time, money and resources. Founded by a group of 3D computer artists and engineers interested in improving the 3D-production pipeline, the companys flagship product, MachStudio Pro, harnesses the power of professional graphics processing units (GPUs) for real-time workflow and rendering. A standalone application with seamless support for popular modeling and animation packages, MachStudio Pro empowers artists and designers working in film, broadcast, game development, computer-assisted design (CAD), and pre- and postproduction to create and manipulate fully rendered film-quality 3D design and animation in real-time. StudioGPU is headquartered in Hollywood, Calif. For more information, visit www.studiogpu.com.

Shopster.com Unveils Free Merchant Network

Social networking brought to online retail

CALGARY, June 30 /PRNewswire/ - Shopster.com announced today the launch of the world's largest online Merchant Network. The Shopster Merchant Network is a one-stop shop for online sellers and suppliers to manage all aspects of their business. Users of the network are empowered with tools to manage their buying and selling relationships. In an industry first, it is free to join.

"Shopster.com is introducing social networking for your products," says Sarath Samarasekera, CEO and co-founder of Shopster.com. "Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn struggle to monetize, but the Shopster network is about making money for our users which aligns our interests. Your success is our success, and it's free to join, so there really is no risk."

According to Paul McCluskey, Shopster's EVP Research and Development, the Network is the product of five years of e-commerce development and extensive research with Shopster's large existing user base.

"We wanted to release something that not only met, but exceeded the expectations of the market," says McCluskey. "The Merchant Network takes traditional software as a service (SaaS) and pushes it farther than ever before, growing more powerful and more useful with each new user. You don't use Shopster to run your business, Shopster is your business. Cheaper, faster, more powerful. What every network and every platform has been striving for."

In addition to providing a proven, stable platform for building online stores, the new Shopster Merchant Network will allow you to:

- Dramatically reduce inventory costs - Connect with suppliers and sellers immediately and manage those relationships - Integrate online commerce activities under one portal - Enhance search engine discoverability ("search engine optimization" or SEO) Merchants and suppliers are encouraged to sign up at http://www.shopster.com at no charge. About Shopster.com:

Founded in 2004, Shopster.com is an official eBay Solutions Partner that offers a suite of eCommerce solutions for small to medium sized business. Thousands of online merchants rely on Shopster from around the world. Shopster simplifies the complexities of online retail, allowing merchants to manage their store, transactions, and supply chain relationships in one easy to use place. Joining the Network is free, so merchants can focus on growth and relationships, not on costs.

SOURCE Shopster.com

Wester Digital Caviar Green Power 2TB Review

I was lucky yo get one of these from Western Digital early on, Now after using it for several months I find it to be a nice quiet drive with loads of capacity. I just don't want to put 2GB of data on a drive that is not at least in a RAID 1. A further concern is Western digital only gives a 3 year warranty on the consumer model compared to 5 years for the enterprise model.

In search of the best case

I have been using the Antec 900 for customer builds but it is a chore getting the cables in looking right. Plus, you have to slide out a section of the front to add drive. When you finally get the drives in the Antec 900 you barely have enough room to cable them. IF the case was just 2" longer it would be perfect. What do you guys think?

Lucky Me

Sent in a Seagate 7200.10 and got a new 7200.12 back - Benchmarks to follow

Pick the HD for your needs- carefully

All techs in the know realize that a computers storage system is the bottleneck of system performance. After all, That where your operating system is installed and the OS is polled constantly during the workstations tasks. Not to mention the fact you have cache that is an extension of your memory in files on the HD's you choose

Want to make a system faster and have the money?, Go fiber channel, after that your option is a good SAS card with great bandwidth. Don't expect a fast boot if you have a RAID controller in the comp as it has to run its own bios and parity checks.

I had convinced myself that a 4x Velociraptor setup on a true raid card (Adaptec w/Intel IO processor on board) was the best. I set bench marks close to 400MB/s in RAID5 (see below) and was truly happy. But then in practical use I would be watching a movie on Netflix (streamed through the comp) and moving files off the array to my new 6 disk NAS. I looked at the loads and the drive queue was the bottleneck not the processor. I had a Cisco gigabit switch and dual gigabit links from the NAS. I verified that I was "jack and jilling" across the connects.




Anyway to make a long story short, I replaced the velociraptors with SGE32's and was surprised. The Seagates had a better IO algorithm (Native Command Queuing II) and increased performance by 20% at 50% the price for 500GB drives.

You may not hammer your drives like I do . I download, check parity, unrar, and move files to different folders. I DL at 1.2MB/s and whatch netflix HD movies now. The only hiccup is when i decompress the rared files as this is all CPU.

If you run a game machine (as I do). Using a velociraptor as the main drive makes it scream but, for your workhorse machine it might be wise to pick a good drive with loads of cache and a good prioritization.

MY .02